Do you have a green thumb? Are you passionate about eating healthy? If so, we’d love to hear from you!

We are working with five primary schools in North-West Cameroon to develop self-sufficient, climate-resilient, earth-friendly gardens that will inspire the next generation of farmers. This year, the children had the most success with lettuce, carrots, and tomatoes. Next year, we want to add one or more of the following: chickpeas or another “pulse” (pea or bean) that can be dried and/or made into flour, sweet potato, cassava, corn (maize, as it is known in Africa), watermelon, pawpaw, papaya, avocado, kale or some other nutritious green, and beets. We would like to give the children at each school a set of 12 cards, each one with information on growing and eating one fruit or vegetable, which they can use to select from 4 to 8 crops that they would like to grow in that year’s garden.

Choose one or more of the fruits or vegetables listed above and fill out the attached information sheet for it. Be sure to leave a comment about which one(s) you are working on, to avoid duplication.

You can find most of the information you need here:

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has a good summary of the growing requirements (you can view it by clicking here) and uses for a variety of crops; click the forward arrow for information on nutrition (scroll down for charts).

Mother Earth News also has a good in-depth companion planting guide, which identifies which crops go well together, in terms of deterring insects or other benefits (you can view it by clicking here).

The plants will be growing in a semi-arid tropical climate 5° to 7° north of the equator. Since the sun is almost directly overhead, its rays can be quite intense, but temperatures rarely climb over 90° F. Heavy rains fall for about three months in fall and three months in spring.

It will likely take you 1 – 4 hours to complete the information for one crop; doing just one is fine, but tackling two or three would be fabulous! If you are interested in learning more about our projects, please view our Global Giving page where you can read more about the projects and updates.

Please email our International Affairs Coordinator, Jill Hinckley at connect@camaayworldwide.org with questions, or to forward a completed garden information sheet.